What is Tom Bombadil?

Viable Theories: A Nature Spirit?

Essay by Steuard Jensen

Bombadil as a Nature Spirit

To reasonably argue that Tom Bombadil is not a Maia, we
must suggest an alternative. As pointed out earlier, this requires a
greater freedom to modify Middle-earth than may be appropriate for us
as mere readers of Tolkien's works. However, if we could find a
"unique" and simple theory that explained the known facts without
being inconsistent with what we know of Middle-earth, a claim that
this was Tolkien's unstated intent would probably be justified. With
this goal in mind, we can begin to explore other options.

Tolkien's own comments in Letter #153 provide support
for looking outside the list of "usual Silmarillion entities" to
explain Bombadil:

"Also T.B. exhibits another point in his attitude to the Ring, and
its failure to affect him. You must concentrate on some part,
probably relatively small, of the World (Universe), whether to
tell a tale, however long, or to learn anything however
fundamental - and therefore much will from that 'point of view' be
left out, distorted on the circumference, or seem a discordant
oddity. The power of the Ring over all concerned, even the
Wizards or Emissaries, is not a delusion - but it is not the whole
picture, even of the then state and content of that part of the
Universe."

One could read this as saying that Bombadil,
despite being in nature similar to the Wizards, falls outside of the
main picture because he is not affected by the Ring. However, an
equally natural reading is that the picture of Middle-earth presented
in LotR is incomplete in a more fundamental way. This 'active'
interpretation encourages us to expand our knowledge of the "content
of that part of the Universe" by identifying a new type of being, of
which Bombadil is an example.

Among the first hints that Bombadil could be some
sort of nature spirit is his first mention
in Letters: in Letter #19, Tolkien asks his
publisher "Do you think Tom Bombadil, the spirit of the (vanishing)
Oxford and Berkshire countryside, could be made into the hero of a
story?" Like the early drafts of LotR, this 1937 letter cannot be
considered trustworthy: Bombadil may have changed a great deal as he
was assimilated into the legendarium. However, it provides a starting
point for our investigation, showing that Tom Bombadil was a "nature
spirit" when Tolkien first imagined him. It seems reasonable to
wonder if this view remained unchanged.

Canonical support for this claim can be found in
Galdor's statement at the Council of Elrond: "Power to defy our Enemy
is not in him, unless such power is in the earth itself. And yet we
see that Sauron can torture and destroy the very hills." Galdor
directly associates the power of Bombadil with that of "the earth
itself", and even uses Sauron's ability to destroy the hills as an
argument that Sauron could defeat Bombadil. This may be the strongest
evidence that Tom is essentially related to the natural world. It is
also difficult to reconcile with the Bombadil-as-Maia theory: a Maia
may have helped to shape the earth, but the ability of another Maia to
reshape it elsewhere is hardly an argument about their relative
power.

Goldberry as a Nature Spirit

Because Bombadil is said to be "Eldest" and otherwise unique, he is
a poor starting place for understanding a general class of beings. On
the other hand, Goldberry is a relatively simple character, so we
begin with her. The evidence suggesting that she is a nature spirit
can teach us about them as a class, and because she and Tom are likely
similar in nature this gives indirect evidence about him as well.

One of the strongest statements supporting this
identity for Goldberry comes from Letter #210, in which Tolkien says
"We are not in 'fairy-land', but in real river-lands in autumn.
Goldberry represents the actual seasonal changes in such lands." This
letter, written well after LotR, indicates that Tolkien saw Goldberry
as a nature spirit in some sense, one associated with river-lands and
seasons.

The repeated statement that Goldberry was "daughter of
the River" also fits well with this idea. If nature spirits in
Middle-earth arise in association with features of the natural
landscape (a possibility discussed below), it would be fitting for a
spirit connected to the Withywindle to be called its
"daughter". Names aside, Goldberry's voice is
repeatedly compared to water and the river, and her songs evoke
potent water imagery:

"Then another clear voice, as young and as ancient as Spring, like
the song of a glad water flowing down into the night from a bright
morning in the hills, came falling like silver to meet them".
--"The Old Forest"

"...there came falling gently as if it was flowing down the rain
out of the sky, the clear voice of Goldberry singing up above them.
They could hear few words, but it seemed plain to them that the
song was a rain song, as sweet as showers on dry hills, that told
the tale of a river from the spring in the highlands to the Sea far
below."

"Goldberry sang many songs for them, songs that began merrily in
the hills and fell softly down into silence; and in the silences
they saw in their minds pools and waters wider than any they had
known, and looking into them they saw the sky below them and the
stars like jewels in the depths."
--"In the House of Tom Bombadil"

"...but at that moment a clear call came rippling down."
--"Fog on the Barrow-Downs"

None of this means that Goldberry must be a river
spirit, but it certainly fits that idea very well. The imagery is
frequent and unambiguous: Goldberry certainly felt closely tied to the
river, whether by nature or by choice.

A close connection with the Withywindle is also
indicated by Tom's story of finding Goldberry: in the chapter "In the
House of Tom Bombadil", Tom sings of water lilies

"in a wide pool, deep and clear, far down the Withywindle; there
they open first in spring and there they linger latest. By that
pool long ago I found the River-daughter, fair young Goldberry
sitting in the rushes."

Anyone can sit in the rushes by a river; this does
not mean she was a nature spirit. However, like the earlier quotes
this is consistent with the notion that Goldberry was intrinsically
associated with the Withywindle and its seasons; it may be significant
that Goldberry's pool held the most lasting spring and summer
lilies.

A seasonal connection is also found in Frodo's verse at
their first meeting ("In the House of Tom Bombadil"): "O spring-time
and summer-time, and spring again after!" Frodo connects Goldberry
with spring and summer, although we don't know the inspiration for his
words: one of Bombadil's unrecorded songs, some deep perception of her
true nature, or simple poetry. The first quote describing Goldberry's
voice mentions spring as well.

A last and very subjective argument along these lines comes from
Frodo's reaction to Goldberry's voice at the beginning of the chapter
"In the House of Tom Bombadil":

"He stood as he had at times stood enchanted by fair elven-voices;
but the spell that was now laid upon him was different: less keen
and lofty was the delight, but deeper and nearer to mortal heart;
marvelous and yet not strange."

This reaction seems very appropriate in response
to a nature spirit associated with the seasons. Where the Elves feel
strange to mortals because their immortality holds them above the
world's changes, a spirit of the seasons might seem marvelous but
would be familiar to them on a very deep level: change is a
fundamental aspect of mortal life. This quote also gives another hint
that Goldberry is not one of the Ainur: the Ainur always seem even
more "lofty" than the Elves.

Other Possible Nature Spirits

If Bombadil and Goldberry are nature spirits, it is possible that
they are the only ones Tolkien ever mentioned. However, the more
potential nature spirits we identify, the more likely it is that such
beings were part of Tolkien's vision for Middle-earth. Also, several
examples would be necessary to learn anything about them as a general
class. While the examples that follow are not meant as convincing
evidence that the "canonical" Middle-earth contains nature spirits,
they support that idea and help inspire the specific theory about them
presented in the next section.

Tolkien's earliest stories explicitly contain
"nature spirits" of a sort. "The Coming of the Valar"
is The Book of Lost Tales I tells of "the
sylphs of the airs and of the winds", "the spirits of the foam and the
surf of the ocean", and

"the sprites of trees and woods, of dale and forest and
mountain-side, or those that sing amid the grass at morning and
chant among the standing corn at eve. These are... brownies, fays,
pixies, leprawns, and what else are they not called, for their
number is very great... they were born before the world and are
older than its oldest, and are not of it, but laugh at it much, for
had they not somewhat to do with its making, so that it is for the
most part a play for them..."

In the language of the later stories, these
spirits were the Maiar. However, while the "Valaquenta" says that "in
Middle-earth the Maiar have seldom appeared in form visible to Elves
and Men", these spirits seem to have been known throughout the
world.

Later revisions hint that Tolkien changed his mind
on the origin of some of these spirits. The last outline for
"Gilfanon's Tale" says of the "Shadow Folk" that

"These were fays (C); no one knows whence they came: they are not of
the Valar nor of Melko, but it is thought that they came from the
outer void and primeval dark when the world was first fashioned."

("(C)" refers to an intermediate outline; I am not
sure what it means here.) In the Lost Tales, all of the Ainur who
entered the world were called Valar, so at least some "fays" now had
very different origins. While none of this reflects Tolkien's later
vision, it shows that he did once imagine nature spirits in
Middle-earth.

As already stated, there are no obvious examples of
nature spirits in Tolkien's later writings, and most of the beings in
Middle-earth are explained in one place or another. However, there is
at least one wholly unexplained race in the canonical texts: the
giants seen by Bilbo in The
Hobbit.[3] While we cannot prove that they
are nature spirits, that possibility suggests some interesting
conclusions.

Some have suggested that the giants were not real, but
this claim is difficult to support. Bilbo both sees them ("he saw
that across the valley the stone-giants were out, and were hurling
rocks") and hears them ("They could hear the giants guffawing and
shouting"). Thorin worries about being "picked up by some giant" and
Gandalf "was far from happy about the giants himself." Gandalf
mentions them later, too: he hopes to "find a more or less decent
giant" to block the goblins' new gate, and he tells Beorn about them.
In short, giants have a firm presence in The
Hobbit, and it is not our place to reject them. They may even
be present in LotR: some suggest that the stones that fall near the
Fellowship on the Redhorn Pass were thrown by giants, though they
remained unseen in the blizzard.[4]

What are giants, and why are they absent from Tolkien's other
published writings? (They did appear in drafts of LotR, but most
references to them were either removed or evolved into the Ents.)
They could be very large humans, just as hobbits are very small ones,
but this does not explain their lack of involvement in Middle-earth.
They could be independent Maiar with a fondness for chaos, but this
also leaves a great many questions unanswered. They could be a
particularly large breed of troll, unable to travel far from their
great mountain lairs lest they turn to stone in the sunlight. Many
explanations are possible, and none are entirely satisfying.

We are interested in the possibility that giants
are nature spirits, so we will look for similarities between them and
Goldberry with this possibility in mind. The more similarities that
we find, the more likely it is that they are "related", and the better
our understanding of nature spirits in general.

One clear similarity between Goldberry and the giants
is that both seem to stay in a relatively small area. Goldberry is
only seen near the Withywindle, and giants are only seen high in the
mountains. Another is their affinity for particular aspects of their
home territory: as noted above, Goldberry is closely connected with
the Withywindle, while the giants are called "stone-giants" and seem
to spend a great deal of time with rocks. This suggests a general
rule: nature spirits are associated with some particular feature of
the landscape, and are unable or unwilling to be separated from it.
Just as Goldberry is "daughter of the River", each giant might be the
"son" of a particular mountain peak.

A more subtle similarity is that they are all
connected in some way to the conditions of the world around them. We
have already seen evidence that Goldberry is associated with the
growing seasons, from Tolkien's direct comments to Frodo's verse to
the spring and summer lilies of the pond where Bombadil found her.
For their part, the giants are only seen during the great
thunderstorm, and if they do appear in LotR it is in the midst of a
blizzard: their connection appears to be with violent weather.

[3] Another unexplained being is Old
Man Willow. We know even less about him than about Bombadil; he could
be related to the Ents or Huorns. If he were instead a nature spirit
as discussed later in this essay, he would probably be associated with
the Old Forest. It is not clear what conditions would make him
"active" (or if we even see him so), but like Tom's his songs have
some power which could indicate some kinship between them.

Yet another possible nature spirit is
Ungoliant: The Book of Lost Tales I defines
her once as "the Primeval Night personified". Even
in The Silmarillion, she is said to have
"descended from the darkness that lies about Arda"; it is not clear if
she was an Ainu. Still more possible nature spirits are the Watcher
in the Water, Beorn, the speaking ravens and thrushes of the Lonely
Mountain, and perhaps even the Great Eagles and the Ents. (Some of
these might not fit well with the specific nature spirit theory
suggested here.)

[4] The comments of the Fellowship on
the Redhorn Pass in "The Ring Goes South" may be relevant here.
Boromir says, "Let those call it the wind who will; there are fell
voices on the air; and these stones are aimed at us." Aragorn
replies,

"I do call it the wind. But that does not make what you say
untrue. There are many evil and unfriendly things in the world
that have little love for those that go on two legs, and yet are
not in league with Sauron, but have purposes of their own. Some
have been in this world longer than he."

The last sentence in particular gives another hint
that Middle-earth contains beings absent from the usual lists. Gimli
adds that "Caradhras was called the Cruel", which may indicate a
belief that the mountain itself could somehow act. (Aragorn makes a
similar comment in "The Departure of Boromir": "The River of Gondor
will take care at least that no evil creature dishonors his bones."
Notably, Faramir's sighting shows that this prediction came true.)